Occupied Press

There is always the chance that the Nazis will beat them to the deadline. If a Pole is caught editing, printing or even so much as possessing one of the newspapers, he is rushed to the executioner. Yet Poland's underground press, according to exiled Polish Government estimates, regularly publishes more than 100 newspapers, with a total hand-to-hand circulation of 3,000,000, or one-sixth of the population of Occupied Poland.

Most of the journals are weeklies. But at least one appears daily in two illustrated editions. Trained Polish newsmen have returned to their country by airplane and parachute from Russia or Britain. Aided by radio, the handicapped newspapers have given remarkable coverage. Within a week after a Winston Churchill review of the war and a London address by Polish Premier General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Szaniec (Rampart) of Warsaw carried the full text of both speeches.

The dangers of underground journalism have been described in an issue of Glos Polski (Poland's Voice): "When knocking at the door brought no response, the Germans threw hand grenades through the windows, blasted the doors open and fired inside several times with their machine guns, killing two of our men and wounding two others, who later died in the hospital. A few days later the owner of the villa, Michael Kruk, his wife and two sons, aged 15 and 17, as well as all tenants of two neighboring houses, were arrested and subsequently shot. In all 83 persons lost their lives."

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